


The Coming Future

by tielan



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26165227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: In the chaos after the moment -thatmoment - Shuri has but one thought: to assure herself that T'Challa has survived.
Relationships: M'Baku & Shuri (Marvel)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 67
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	The Coming Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tanaqui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/gifts).



> Dear recipient, I finished this story about an hour before the news about Chadwick came out...and then I had nothing in me with which to write another story about these characters. I quite understand if this is too raw for the moment and I'm so sorry I couldn't provide something happier to your specifications.

In the chaos after the moment - _that_ moment - Shuri has but one thought: to assure herself that T'Challa has survived.

He does not answer his comm, and having seen the Dora Milaje who fought alongside her drift into nothing, cold grips Shuri's throat, choking her voice as she tries to reach Okoye, tries to reach Nakia, tries to reach Ayo--

"Princess?"

She nearly weeps with relief as Okoye's voice comes clearly across the line. "General. What news?"

"Bad." The rich voice trembles. "So many have died - or, not died, but dissolved..."

Crumbled like dry leaves and blown away to nothing... Shuri forces the question from her lips. "T'Challa?"

The silence stretches too long.

"I'm sorry, Princess."

Shuri wants to grieve. She wants to rage. She wants to shut herself into her laboratory and curl up in a corner and pretend that none of this is happening.

She cannot.

She cannot.

Her brother the king is gone, but half his subjects remain, and they look for continuity and answers. They look for certainties and assurances. They look to the palace for leadership.

And so it is to the palace that the remaining Wakandan leaders return, shoulders bowed, footsteps heavy. They bring with them the remnant Avengers: Colonel Rhodes, Captain America, the Black Widow, the Hulk, Prince Thor...

"The White Wolf?" Shuri asks, already seeing the answer in Captain America’s blank and grieving gaze.

"He didn’t make it, your Highness."

“I’m sorry, Captain.”

The pattern is repeated over and over in the next few hours: inquiry, answer, mourning. Everyone is sorry. Everyone is grieving. Everyone is in shock, stunned at what has happened.

Thanos won. They lost.

The Avengers do not wish to stay in Wakanda, although Shuri makes the invitation because the hospitality of her forbears demands it.

"Thanks," Colonel Rhodes says gently. "But I think we'll do better recouping in our own space." He glances at his companions, each of them wrapped up in their own grief, hardly heedful of the others.

Shuri crosses her forearms and nods to him in the Wakandan salute. After a moment's hesitation, he returns it. Not Wakandan, but an admirable man to have held his own respect and integrity in the cultures of the colonizers.

She is almost sorry to see them go, but there will be no avoiding the coming conflict.

M'Baku of the Jabari has softened a little in the time since her brother's coronation; but he is still a traditionalist at heart.

"We must hold our own," he insists. "It is what has kept us safe all this time."

"When there exists power like Thanos wielded against Earth, safety is an illusion," Shuri counters. "And it was the illusion Wakanda held nothing the colonizers deemed worth stealing that kept us from being attacked all those years. We cannot go back to our own devices; there is a world out there that knows what we are - and they need us."

"The world turned its back on us once before; it will do so again."

Okoye rouses from where she stands at the window, blindly looking out into the gardens as the evening begins to fall over the land. "Tell me, Lord M'Baku. Now that war has been fought on our lands in full view, do you think the colonizers will not say that it was our fault that Thanos and his Outriders came here? That it was our fault that heroes were lost along with billions of others? Do you think that they will not find someone to blame for what Thanos has done? And do you think that they will not light upon Wakanda as not only a government on which to fix the blame, but also as a rich resource of technology that they desire and covet?"

Shuri is somewhat taken aback by the bluntness of the General's statement. But she seizes on the aspects that will help her argument.

"We need to continue our outreach beyond Wakanda. Establish ourselves as a sovereign nation, but one which is willing to share fairly and freely - now, more than ever."

Murmurs ripple through the room. "You cannot be serious, Princess," says one of the replacement Council, as though she makes a joke of such things regularly. "We have lost half our own resources thanks to the actions of that madman. We cannot now afford to share freely with others!"

"We have food," Shuri reminds them. "Wakanda has always prided itself on being prepared and sustained. Two years of supplies laid in, preserved and stored - that is the way of it, correct? And," she adds when they fret like the elders they are, "if we help those whom others will not, they will remember who we are and what we stand for."

"You would see Wakanda stripped of its resources?"

"P'Tali, that is over-dramatic. I would see us share what we have," she counters. "Do you think the colonizers care for Africa? That their treaties and agreements will benefit us? And what is said of the colonizers is said of Wakanda, too - that we have protected our own at the cost of those less fortunate than to be born within our borders. Our people have lived in peace and plenty for centuries while theirs scrambled for meals and enslaved their citizens to mine resources!"

M'Baku watches her. "You wish Wakanda to turn empire, Princess?"

"I want us to be leaders," Shuri says fiercely. "My forefathers built us up to be mighty in the safety and surety of our people and they did so right underneath the noses of the colonizers. What did we become mighty for if not to lead the way - for continent and colonizer alike?"

\--

The argument is fiercely debated until the need for sleep requires cessation, and the Council agrees to convene upon the morning and discuss it again.

As Shuri retreats to her lab, she hopes the discussion won't take long tomorrow, although she has few hopes of that. T'Challa always said that if there was anything the Council loved doing, it was debating points. And that was in times when the situation wasn't so dire.

Okoye advised her to get some sleep. " _Preferably before the dawn,_ " the General added with a wry look.

Frankly, Shuri just wants some time with her devices, something to occupy her hands and thoughts, something that will hold her many fears at bay, if only for the space of a few hours. She has lost her brother and her king in the last day, and while she grieves, a greater grief rises up in her - the loss of her belief in her own capabilities.

What if she had worked harder to separate the android Vision from the gem in his head? What if she had thought of a swifter extraction before Thanos attacked? What if she had foreseen the difficulties of removing the gem and planned ahead?

_What if--? What if--? What if--?_

"A bold action, your highness," M'Baku says from the door. "Do you think it can be done?"

This isn't an argument she wants to have now. Not at this hour. Not with the chief of the Jabari tribe, and the man who might very well be the next leader of Wakanda. Shuri is not oblivious to the mutterings of the council. The traditions of male rule are not as ingrained as they might be in other countries - there have been ruling Queens of Wakanda before - but they, also, are decided in battle. And while the council might have confirmed Shuri's rule at another time, with everything so uncertain, they will be looking for the more traditional ruler - a man with the strength of arms behind him.

She wonders what he is doing here, on her turf, in her space.

"I think that if any country in our world can, then Wakanda can. We alone have the resources _and_ the ability to act with generosity. And we have been turned inwards long enough."

"Is that a criticism, Princess?"

She stares him down. "You can take it so if you feel it fits, Lord M'Baku."

He snorts a little, more amused than challenged. "You are certainly one for breaking the traditions of our ancestors."

"Our traditions were for a time and a place that no longer exists!" Shuri argues. "They are for a world that is done and gone. The world changed on the day that the Chitauri attacked - on American soil, yes, but no ocean would have stopped them."

"Our shields would have stopped them."

"At what cost to ourselves, watching the Chitauri kill and maim and control everyone outside our borders?"

Maybe she is fighting a losing battle against the blind spot of her people. Her ancestors made the choice they thought was right in the times they lived in; but those times are gone. Wakanda cannot hope to stay apart, not when so many others now know what lies behind the shields. And Okoye is right: the colonizers will not hesitate to lay the blame on Wakanda for what Thanos did, and what the Avengers failed to prevent.

Yet too much has happened too fast for too many, and heels are being dug in as old, ingrained fears rear their heads.

"Okoye is right," she says wearily, "If we do not move now – if we wait too long – the colonizers will not hesitate to lay the blame on Wakanda for Thanos’ actions. Our best option is immediate response."

"And what would you have Wakanda do? Food drives? Martial law?"

"Yes, where necessary. We stabilise on our continent where trouble rises, we settle political hash where it threatens to overturn stability, we protect those who are at risk, and we raise up protectors behind us."

"There will be suspicion. Some will take advantage of our generosity."

"There are always scavengers on the edges of the herd," Shuri retorts. "And have we not always taught that Wakanda is the predator of those who would make us prey? Perhaps it is time that we became the predator of those who would make _others_ prey, too!"

Rather than take offense at her words, M'Baku has a half-smile on his face. Satisfaction? Or scorn? Shuri does not know him well enough to say.

"And so the Princess shows her claws, eh?"

"You've seen me with my 'claws', Lord M'Baku," she points out, referring to the fight for Wakanda when the Killmonger attempted to corrupt Wakanda's purpose. "Would you go up against me?"

"Princess, I would not challenge you any day of the year!”

"Not even on the Warrior Falls?"

Shuri didn't intend to mention the challenge for the throne, but the words slip out of her before she can hold them back. And maybe it is better to have this out here, to acknowledge the battle that must be between them.

But M'Baku only shakes his head, snorting. "Princess, I would not risk challenging you anywhere, at any time - not even with Hanuman's staff in hand!"

"You did T'Challa--" His name chokes in her throat, a sob rising unbidden, and she closes her eyes.

_Oh, my brother! Do you rest with our ancestors now? If I travel to the spirit-realm of our people, will I find you there? Or did Thanos take that peace from you, too?_

The worst of it is that she will never know. The realm of the ancestors is closed to them, with no more of the heart-shaped herb available, although there have been many attempts to both grow and synthesise a replacement.

She knows the tears run out from beneath her lashes, but she does not wipe them away. Grief is not shameful. And today, all grieve.

Even, it seems, M'Baku. His footsteps draw near and an arm slides around her shoulder. Shuri takes a moment to feel surprise, and then she leans in, trusting this to be true and no mere ploy for her vulnerability. He tenses, seemingly surprised by her surrender, then relaxes into her, too, and after a moment, his broad chest heaves with his own rackings of grief.

Who did he lose today who was precious to him, Shuri wonders, allowing herself to be distracted from her own grief. What friends? What loved ones? And where do any of them go when they have lost so much?

They face outwards, eastwards, towards the rising sun and the days that will come at them. They must, or else the world will grind to a halt and more be lost than half their loved ones.

Part of that facing the world means being able to endure the council tomorrow.

Which may even mean getting to sleep at what Okoye and Nakia and T'Challa - T'Challa! - define as 'a reasonable hour'.

Comforting as it is to share her grief with someone, Shuri extricates herself from the Jabari leader's comfort, wiping away her tears and forcing her feet over to her workdesk. As she checks on the routines she began this afternoon to deal with cleaning up the stained and broken battlefields of the countryside, she makes herself pick up the thread of conversation that fell when she stopped to mourn T'Challa.

"You would not face me at the Warrior Falls?"

M'Baku coughs a little, clearing his throat. "Highness, your brother showed me that mercy can be powerful, too. Your cousin, the Killmonger, believed in the strength of arms over all - he had no other truth to ground him. But T'Challa made an ally out of an enemy; a brother out of an opponent. His strength was not merely in the gifts of Bast, but in his ability to lead Wakanda into the future."

"He questioned his decisions many times in the last years.”

"A leader often does. You will grow used to it." When Shuri looks at him, astonished, the handsome features crease with amusement and something more - ruefulness, perhaps. "Yes, I will back you before the council. I came tonight to tell you that. And no, I did not need the so-terrifying General to instruct me what to say."

The thought of Okoye cornering M'Baku and threatening him draws a laugh from her throat. It is at once an amusing and daunting thought, and she distracts herself from it by checking the status of the program that she ran to separate Outrider flesh and technology from the clump of Wakandan soil in which it lay.

"Princess." The seriousness in his voice gives her pause, and she looks up from her screen.

M'Baku seems incongruous in her lab, clad in a more formal version of his battle gear. What is marginally suitable for sitting in the weighty architecture of the council chamber is vastly out of place amidst the pristine technology here - a starkly visual disruption to the smooth lines of her existence.

"I am your friend, and sworn ally, as I was your brother's. If you find yourself in need of advice in ruling or leadership or dealing with the elderly and intransigent, then ask and I will give what I can."

Shuri can only stare at him. "Why?"

"Your brother was the right king to lead Wakanda out into the world." He says it with certainty. "But you will be the right queen to lead the world behind Wakanda."

And while she is still staring at him in mingled surprise and pleasure, he salutes her with crossed arms, bows his head in respect, and walks from the room.


End file.
